Conducted by Amy Ma
Academy of Web Specialists
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11:02:24 2003 amy Welcome, this is a round table discussion regarding Google and Yahoo, we can start now. Please feel free to ask and answer. Please use "?" for questions and I will make a note for your turn.
11:02:40 2003 amy Thanks and let's begin!
11:03:23 2003 amy Anyone has great success with yahoo rankings, please feel free to share.
11:04:20 2003 amy Currently, Yahoo default results display a mix of directory and Google results. As we know, Yahoo purchased Inktomi and we expect Inktomi will come into this picture as well.
11:04:23 2003 amy yes jason
11:04:47 2003 jason poole I was just wondering what you belief is on how Yahoo will integrate Inktomi
11:05:05 2003 jason poole will they switch to it exclusively or will they keep google results
11:05:57 2003 amy This is still a mystery until the algorithm is analyzed which it's pending, anybody has any feedback?
11:06:29 2003 amy Do you remember a while back that Yahoo uses Inktomi as the web pages results? It was very to optimize those days.
11:06:58 2003 amy Anyone knows how long Yahoo signed with google?
11:07:42 2003 jason poole I have only been in the SEO field for a few months, so I did not know that yahoo used Inktomi previously
11:07:46 2003 amy Right now, if you have good results with Google, you are likely to be great in Yahoo as well.
11:08:06 2003 jason poole I am not sure what the contracted length is and have not heard much news that way.
11:08:16 2003 amy anyone?
11:08:57 2003 amy Kinda doubt if Yahoo will use Inktomi exclusively again.
11:09:06 2003 jason poole I know that in the main "keyword" category that I am after, on Google I am ranked 7.
11:09:23 2003 jason poole When I look on Yahoo, I am ranked 5.
11:09:57 2003 jason poole The only difference between the two, is that Yahoo is not listing different pages from the same website.
11:10:06 2003 amy Yahoo mixed in its directory results also.
11:10:23 2003 jason poole Therefore, if I take out those pages, I am ranked 5 on both Yahoo and Google.
11:10:37 2003 amy Yes, one URL per site at Yahoo usually unless your site is huge that deserves different URL listings.
11:11:03 2003 jason poole In the area that I am after, Yahoo is echoing Google's results
11:11:16 2003 jason poole At least for the top 10, I haven't really looked beyond that.
11:11:56 2003 amy Yes, I agree, at this point. If you rank great in Google, you can rank decently in Yahoo and AOL these days and other smaller engines.
11:12:02 2003 jason poole I know that, a few months ago, Yahoo had raised the price to be included in it's search engine.
11:12:31 2003 amy Isn't it still $299?
11:12:37 2003 jason poole However, they had a "grandfather" clause that allowed sites already registered to get some kind of a special "deal"
11:13:06 2003 jason poole Yes, I heard that the change was a few months ago, maybe it was longer. But $299 is what I am referring to.
11:13:52 2003 jason poole It is my belief that since Yahoo just paid lots of $$$ for Inktomi, that they will start to integrate Inktomi into yahoo.
11:14:00 2003 amy It was quite more than a year ago that Yahoo charges $299 annually for commercial sites.
11:14:24 2003 jason poole Like I said, I have only been in this business for a few months. So I am not sure
11:14:37 2003 amy That's what we all think at this point. Now you may ask does it worth to pay $299 now that Yahoo displays Google results?
11:14:49 2003 jason poole what I was referring to is that fact that yahoo will most likely raise the cost of inclusion into Inktomi.
11:15:45 2003 jason poole I believe that yahoo will leave google and create a "super" search engine or at the very least, start including listings from Inktomi.
11:16:08 2003 pata According to Danny Sullivan... Google will continue to provide backend results to Yahoo until September.
11:16:17 2003 jason poole When, and of course IF, they do that, I believe that they will raise the price for inclusion in Inktomi'
11:16:29 2003 amy For Inktomi inclusion, it's now $25 per URL, it was $18 before, hope that they won't raise
11:16:34 2003 williams That is what I heard as well they signed for 6 more months with google
11:16:52 2003 amy Thanks Pata
11:17:24 2003 jason poole Due to the habit of Yahoo raising rates, I have decided to pay to list with Inktomi.
11:18:15 2003 jason poole If Yahoo, does raise the rates, and I am almost positive that they will, I am expecting them to offer a special grandfather option to those who are already signed up with Inktomi
11:18:19 2003 amy But without Yahoo, link pop for your site will not be as high if you are in a competitive field. Listing in ODP helps a great deal, but nowadays, ODP...
11:19:07 2003 amy We do have great results with Inktomi in MSN for our sites.
11:19:30 2003 amy Paying Inktomi is definitely worth it.
11:19:54 2003 jason poole I can't get anyone to respond to me from ODP. I have been submitting to them for 6 months and I even went through the lengthy application to become a moderator for one category.
11:19:54 2003 pata Does Yahoo really weigh heavy for link pop?
11:20:50 2003 amy We found that it's a great help, anybody? Some may disagree though. If you have a choice, listing in ODP first and then Yahoo will make sense also.
11:21:19 2003 amy Listing in ODP makes a good difference in Google rankings, makes optimizing for Google easier.
11:21:40 2003 amy But who has success with ODP nowadays?
11:22:23 2003 amy ODP has problem with its database display also.
11:22:37 2003 jason poole when referring to ODP, you are talking about dmoz.org, correct?
11:22:44 2003 amy yes.
11:23:50 2003 amy According to higher level meta editors at ODP, ODP database has not been updated for a while and they are still dealing with the problems in programming.
11:24:29 2003 amy I would really like to see this directory as a paid directory!
11:24:53 2003 pata Does that mean if you recently submitted , it is unlikely to be indexed?
11:26:23 2003 amy Indexing in ODP, I think, you are really in the mercy of the editor's hands. You may get indexed or not. But what they mean with database problems are - if you search within ODP, you may not find the sites you want even though they are listed.
11:26:35 2003 amy You need to drill down the categories to find your sites.
11:26:53 2003 amy Is your site indexed yet?
11:28:02 2003 pata I have not submitted there ever. My google and Yahoo listings are great though
11:28:03 2003 amy Anybody who is an ODP editor may be able to share more about this.
11:28:11 2003 amy That's great!!!
11:28:35 2003 amy It may be better if you are listed in ODP as well.
11:29:00 2003 amy Try submitting it and see what happens.
11:29:15 2003 amy Back to Google and Yahoo...
11:29:25 2003 pata It's on my ever growing list!!
11:29:38 2003 amy Anyone has any news or comments to share?
11:29:41 2003 amy I bet!
11:30:51 2003 amy How many of us are new to SEO?
11:31:01 2003 jason poole
11:31:21 2003 pata about 1 year in for me
11:31:38 2003 nachtman about 6 months
11:32:02 2003 amy 1 year - that's considered experienced in this field, this crazy industry changes so often!!
11:32:43 2003 amy Well, if we don't have specific questions in Google and Yahoo, we canto general SEO questions and discussion if you want.
11:32:45 2003 pata I know.
11:33:06 2003 pata what about you, Amy?
11:33:16 2003 amy What paid inclusion do we mostly pay for if we have a new site?
11:33:34 2003 amy For me, since 1995.
11:34:07 2003 amy And I think I took Robin's class in 97?
11:34:33 2003 amy But still find this field very exciting to be in
11:34:36 2003 amy Yes pata.
11:34:56 2003 pata what are your views on cloaking and what are some engine policies that you are familiar with?
11:35:34 2003 amy Jason, are you OK?
11:35:45 2003 jason poole yup, just playing a little :-)
11:36:09 2003 amy Cloaking...
11:36:42 2003 jason poole what about cloaking?
11:36:43 2003 amy our company absolutely don't touch it since we started...
11:36:52 2003 burgwald brb I am go to save this section
11:37:18 2003 amy I know that cloaking works though
11:37:21 2003 pata so you are strongly against it?
11:37:57 2003 amy However, our clients' sites are in our hands, we cannot take that risk of getting banned. And we have seen sites getting banned.
11:38:06 2003 pata It seems that many engines have fuzzy rules for it, or are even willing to discuss if they allow it?
11:38:29 2003 amy Competitors report you and "spam police" finds you, too much risks to deal with.
11:38:57 2003 amy For SEO, have good content plays a key role in winning.
11:39:03 2003 pata amy, what is the name of your company and url?
11:39:24 2003 amy You may think that it's old fashion though, but it will always work.
11:39:33 2003 amy Name of company: ATTACH
11:39:37 2003 amy attachusa.com
11:40:10 2003 amy Although we offer a lot of other allied services, SEO is big part of our sales and revenue.
11:40:37 2003 amy Number of pages sometimes play well too.
11:41:14 2003 amy If your site has a lot of content rich pages, it's easier to be ranked higher within a short period comparing to a smaller site, we found.
11:41:54 2003 amy Just for example, one of our clients make directory sites of all types of industry.
11:42:15 2003 amy Each directory will have 20,000 right from the start.
11:43:04 2003 amy Now, do you think this site will excel better than a site with 10 pages? Yes. Really short time to get up there.
11:43:16 2003 amy I mean 20,000 pages
11:44:01 2003 amy So you have a smaller site, you will need to work on link pop, and optimize well to compete.
11:44:05 2003 pata who exactly are the "SPAM police"/
11:44:34 2003 amy This is a group of people grouped together to report sites that spam the engines.
11:45:04 2003 pata an official group or just people in general?
11:45:08 2003 amy as far as I know
11:46:02 2003 amy don't think that they are official, maybe just a community to keep the sites in SEs in fair order. I personally don't have experience with them.
11:46:54 2003 amy Being us serving our clients, if we find competitors spamming, we also report to SEs as well, as part of the SEO duty.
11:48:13 2003 amy So for cloaking, some may argue that it's a wonderful thing to do and it works so well and they are not caught yet. You'll be the judge... :)
11:49:10 2003 amy Just be cautious when we are using SEO advanced techniques these days just because there are more watchful eyes out there. Getting banned is not a good experience and need more time to recover the sites.
11:50:08 2003 jason poole if you find someone spamming, who do you report it to?
11:50:30 2003 amy Different engines has different department.
11:52:07 2003 amy For Google, they have a special email address at the About Us section. For yahoo, it's url-support
11:52:15 2003 amy Yes alanm
11:52:18 2003 alanm I'm could use suggestions or a strategy for re-submitting to ODP...
11:52:21 2003 alanm It looks like my category may be run by a competitor.
11:53:00 2003 amy This is also one of the major complaints about competitor running the category and it's often to be that way as well.
11:53:29 2003 amy You can go higher up to the meta editor and write to them, but don't be too angry...
11:53:37 2003 pata I would be very cautious to report someone. The rule around what is SPAM and what is not are not always clear. Be very sure someone is being DELIBERATLY deceptive before you report the.. Also If the content on your cloaked page matches the content on the human page, I'm not so sure that that is SPAMMING.
11:54:12 2003 amy There is an ODP forum also but does not allow us to complain about editors but just to submit inquiry on your site's listing status.
11:54:40 2003 amy Pata, I do agree.
11:55:04 2003 alanm Do you have a link to the ODP forum?
11:55:27 2003 amy Again, when SEO standards were published a while ago, when they refer to spamming as any invisible content, no matter it's relevant or not. All content should be visible to human eyes.
11:55:41 2003 amy let me see...
11:56:15 2003 pata amy.. can you tell us where these guidelines are published please?
11:56:51 2003 amy The SEO guide by Sherpa also has some information there.
11:57:11 2003 cameron seopros.org
11:57:41 2003 amy thank you.
11:58:26 2003 amy I have the ODP forum bookmarked, I need to grab it later after the chat.
11:58:54 2003 pata sherpa.com???
11:59:11 2003 amy http://www.bruceclay.com/web_ethics.htm Bruce does some information on SEO ethics.
11:59:27 2003 amy marketingsherpa.com
12:00:10 2003 amy It's a very resourceful site and has a lot of newsletters. They had published the SEO guide and upgraded several times.
12:00:51 2003 jason poole ?
12:01:12 2003 amy http://www.resource-zone.com is the ODP forum.
12:01:18 2003 amy Yes jason.
12:01:23 2003 alanm thanks, I'll give it a try.
12:01:28 2003 amy Great!
12:02:01 2003 jason poole If I understood what you said, you can go to seopro.org to find out the status of your listing in the ODP?
12:02:23 2003 amy resource-zone.com is the ODP support forum.
12:02:41 2003 jason poole ok, thanks.
12:02:48 2003 amy seopros.org states the standards and ethics
12:03:24 2003 amy Thank you very much, everyone, for coming. We are hoping that by next chat, we have more news about these two engines for you!!

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